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In meiner Dissertation behandle ich das geographische Traktat in der Weltgeschichte des Giyorgis Wäldä Amid, die in der Äthiopischen Literatur unter dem Namen Tarikä Wäldä ʾAmid bekannt ist und im Arabischen unter dem Namen seines Autors Ǧirǧis al-Makīn Ibn al-ʿAmīd oder als al-Maǧmūʿ al-mubārak "Die Gesegnete Sammlung". In meiner Teiledition habe ich alle verfügbaren Handschriften kollationiert, welche das geographische Traktat enthalten sowie eine Übersetzung ins Deutsche und ein Kommentar zu seinem geographischen Inhalt sowie auch zu seinen sprachlichen Eigenheiten. Ǧirǧis al-Makīn Ibn al-ʿAmīd, der Ältere wurde 1206 n. u. Z. in Kairo in eine anerkannte christliche Familie geboren. Wie einige seiner Vorfahren war Ǧirǧis Mitglied im Diwan des Heeres und hatte somit in der Zeit der letzten Ayyubiden-Sultane eine wichtige Funktion in der Militäradministration inne. Seine Position brachte ihm nicht nur Anerkennung sondern auch Schwierigkeiten. Er fiel in der darauffolgenden Phase der Mameluckenherrschaft in Ungnade und wurde mehrfach eingesperrt und des Hochverrats angeklagt, wie einige spätere Quellen berichten, welche auch von einem 15-jährigen Arrest in der Zeit des Mamlucken-Sultan Baybars erzählen. Eventuell schrieb al-Makīn seine Universalgeschichte während oder nach der Zeit seiner Inhaftierung. Ob al-Makīn für sein Werk ein hohes Maß an Originalität zuerkannt werden kann oder ob er vielmehr in weiten Teilen die Werke seiner Zeitgenossen Abu Šākir ibn al-Rāhib und Ibn al-Wāsil kopierte, ist weiterhin Gegenstand von Diskussionen. Die spätere Forschung tendiert zu der Annahme einer weitgehenden Übernahme der genannten beiden Quellen. Allein die hinteren Abschnitte seines Werkes, welche al-Makīns eigene Lebensspanne betreffen, stellen seine eigenen Ansichten dar. Der geographische Abschnitt ist im vorderen Teil der Weltgeschichte, der die vorislamische Geschichte behandelt, integriert - konkret an jener Stelle, die die Turmbau zu Babel und die Verwirrung der Sprachen und Zerstreuung der Völker bespricht. Jene Legende veranlasste den Autor eine Abhandlung über die behaupteten 72 Völkerschaften einzuschieben, die sich nach christlicher Überlieferung fortan über die bewohnte Welt entsprechend ihrer Herkunft in Semiten, Hamiten und Japhetiten aufteilten. Nach der Darstellung dieser überlieferten Völkerliste, die auf das Alte Testament, Genesis 10 zurückgeht, wird der/die Leser*in über vier Randzonen der Erde im Norden, Süden, Osten und Westen aufgeklärt, in denen lebensfeindliche Bedingungen mit entweder zu großer Kälte, Hitze, Trockenheit oder Nässe herrschten, während allein die Mitte davon bewohnbar sei. Die Beschreibung dieser mittleren, gemäßigten Zone geht sogleich in eine Beschreibung des Laufes der Sonne und des Mondes über, bevor dann die gemäßigte Zone weiter in sieben gleich große Klimazone aufgeteilt wird und die Zeit der maximalen Sonnenscheindauer angegeben wird. Diese Klimata werden in einem weiteren Textabschnitt ausführlicher mit Nennung zahlreicher Orte und Eigenarten ausgeführt, nachdem zuvor ihre Ausdehnung in Meilen, Parasangen, Grad und Tagesreisen berechnet wurde. Das geographische Traktat wird mit einer Beschreibung von zwei großen Weltozeanen - dem Indischen Meer und dem Atlantischen Ozean, abgeschlossen. Alle sieben Textabschnitte repräsentieren somit bestimmte Aspekte und distinkte Text-Genres der Historischen Geography, welche viele Jahrhunderte überdauerte und bis in vorchristliche Zeit zurückreichen. Das geographische Traktat enthält natürlicherweise eine große Zahl von Toponymen und Ethnonymen. Einige davon waren zur Zeit der Abfassung oder ihrer Übersetzung in das Äthiopische bereits veraltet und nicht mehr verständlich. Aufgrund verbreiteter Ambivalenzen in der arabischen und in der äthiopischen Schrift, sind diese zahlreichen Eigennamen häufig verfälscht oder komplett entstellt, so dass ihre Identifikation viel Mühe und einen wichtigen Teil der Arbeit ausmacht. Aufgrund von Divergenzen, die bei der Übertragung einer arabischen Textvorlage durch eine abweichende Setzung diakritischer Zeichen entstanden sind, konnte ich nachweisen, dass die Weltgeschichte des Ibn al-ʿAmīd in zwei unabhängigen Übersetzungen in das Äthiopische gekommen ist. Nach Hinweisen im Incipit und im Desinit einiger Handschriften, gelang es mir die Übersetzung der ersten Rezension (α-Rezension) in die Regierungszeit von König Zärʾa Yaʿqob (1434 bis 1468 n. u. Z.) zu datieren. Für die zweite Übersetzung konnte ich mit ähnlich großer Wahrscheinlichkeit eine Zeitspanne zwischen 1525 und 1540 während der Regierungszeit des Königs Ləbnä Dəngəl ermitteln. Im sprachwissenschaftlichen Teil meiner Dissertation beschäftige ich mich mit der eben angesprochenen großen Vielfalt und ambivalenten Orthographie der enthaltenen Eigennamen und bemühe mich um eine Systematisierung und Unterscheidung zwischen Entstellungen und Missverständnissen einerseits und divergierende, multiple Standart-Formen andererseits. Weiterhin konnte ich eine Reihe von arabisierenden Phänomenen im Übersetzungstext kenntlich machen. Dazu gehören arabisierende Namensformen, Adjektive mit der Nisbe-Endung auf -i, einige Fälle von spezifischer geographischer Terminologie, ideomatische Phraseologie sowie weitere Begriffe sowie auch die Konstruktion mit l-omu anstatt des im Gəʿəz sonst üblichen b-omu zur Bezeichnung von Besitz oder Zugehörigkeit in Entsprechung zum arabischen la-hum. Weitere Elemente sind die Konstruktion von wä- ... wä- ... als Entsprechung des arabischen wa-ʾammā ... fa ..., die Erscheinung von asyndetischen Attributivsätzen, Ordinalzahlen in Postposition sowie ein früher Beleg für die Verwendung des Schriftzeichens ሻ.

This article surveys the diasporic life and legacy of the Ethiopian ecclesiastic Täsfa Ṣeyon. After examining his origins in the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia and the circumstances of his arrival in mid-sixteenth-century Rome, the article outlines his contributions to the evolving Latin Catholic understanding of Ethiopia. Täsfa Ṣeyon was a librarian, copyist, teacher, translator, author, and community leader, as well as a prominent adviser to European humanist scholars and Church authorities concerned with orientalistphilologia sacraas it pertained to Ethiopian Orthodox (täwaḥedo) Christianity. As such, he was a key extra-European agent in the Tridentine project of Ethiopianist and Eastern Christian knowledge production. The article also surveys the complex modern legacy of Täsfa Ṣeyon's career, documenting his posthumous influence in the fields of Ethiopianist Semitic studies and Ethiopian vernacular historiography.

The paper as part of a long-running series is devoted to the etymological analysis of a new segment (namely that with initial dental *d-) of the Angas-Sura root stock, a small group of modern languages remotely and ultimately akin to pharaonic Egyptian and the well-known Semitic languages or Twareg in the Sahara etc. Doing so, I wish to continue the noble tradition initiated by J.H. Greenberg (1958), the founding father of modern Afro-Asiatic comparative linguistics (along with I.M. Diakonoff), who was the first scholar ever to have established by Neo-Grammarian the methods regular consonantal correspondences between Angas-Sura and ancient Egyptian in his pioneering (painfully isolated) paper on the ancient trichtomomy of the word-initial labials in both branches. Nowadays our chances in following this path are substantially more favourable being equipped with our gigantic comparative root catalogue system of the Egyptian etymologies ever published (ongoing since 1994) and of the Afro-Asiatic parental lexical stock (ongoing since 1999).

A much discussed morpheme in Semitic historical linguistics is the suffix *-n. Its reflexes include the energic in Classical Arabic, the ventive in Akkadian, and many languages with a [V – n – object pronoun] reflex. Explanations of its origins fall broadly into two camps. One sees it originally as a proto-Semitic verbal suffix, while the other derives it from a grammaticalization of an originally independent [deictic/presentative + object pronoun] element. This paper argues for the correctness of the second explanation, to which end a general reconstruction of the historical development of the morpheme in West Semitic is developed, with particular attention given to Arabic. Although a modest and unobtrusive morpheme, it is argued that the linguistics of *-n is of considerable significance for conceptualizations of Arabic and Semitic historical linguistics.

Christian Ravius' Turkish and Semitic studies and his work as an Orientalist in the Swedish State Service

In 2015 Ludmilla Hanisch published a study featuring the outcomes of a survey she had conducted in the legacy of Mark Lidzbarski. This legacy is housed in the archive of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft in Halle/Saale (Germany) and includes documents and evidence related to both the personal life and academic research of the renowned Semitist. In a terse and fluent style, the author provides an overview of the contents of the legacy interweaved with the life of Lidzbarski. The present translation aims at making this important contribution accessible to a wider audience and represents a tribute to the author, who passed away before it was published., Kervan. International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, V. 24 N. 2 (2020)

Presentación para las II Jornadas de Iniciación a la Investigación del Departamento de Estudios Semíticos (JiiDES) celebradas en la Universidad de Granada los días 10, 11 y 12 de abril de 2019

This article presents the history of Arabic-Islamic studies in Norway, within the wider framework of Scandinavia and Europe. While Semitic studies reach well back into the sixteenth century in Sweden and Denmark, it was only in the early nineteenth century that the study of Arabic was introduced into Norway with the establishment of a university in 1811. From their inception, Arabic and Semitic studies were instrumental in reaching out into the world as well as in defining the national self-identity. I discuss these developments and the role and function philology played in various studies, programmes and disciplines, taking into account the shifting historical and sociocultural contexts. Issues of relevance and utility value as well as diverse political and economic concerns have throughout history formed the structural frameworks. Simultaneously, however, I demonstrate how individual motivation and impetus have continued to be of vital importance to the development of the fields. Finally, I discuss some of the current challenges and prospects for philological studies, and argue for the continued relevance for these methodological approaches.

The article discusses the ideological role played by the Semitic component in Yiddish in four major texts of Yiddish philology from the first half of the 20th century: Ysroel Haim Taviov’s “The Hebrew Elements of the Jargon” (1904); Ber Borochov’s “The Tasks of Yiddish Philology” (1913); Nokhem Shtif’s “The Social Differentiation of Yiddish: Hebrew Elements in the Language” (1929); and Max Weinreich’s “What Would Yiddish Have Been without Hebrew?” (1931). The article explores the ways in which these texts attribute various religious, national, psychological and class values to the Semitic component in Yiddish, while debating its ontological status and making prescriptive suggestions regarding its future. It argues that all four philologists set the Semitic component of Yiddish in service of their own ideological visions of Jewish linguistic, national and ethnic identity (Yiddishism, Hebraism, Soviet Socialism, etc.), thus blurring the boundaries between descriptive linguistics and ideologically engaged philology.

Dillmann’s Lexicon linguae Aethiopicae has timeless value in various ways, nevertheless it needs a kind of user’s manual. Even apparently obvious references require an explanation on several levels. Here we give a sample of such explanations. A completed list will eventually be provided via an online application.

The GeTa tool has been developed at Hamburg to address the challenge of tokenization and multi-level annotation of Ethiopic texts, with the aim of further computer-assisted analysis of the morphology and lexicography of the Gǝʿǝz language. The paper illustrates the workflow of linguistic annotation with the help of the tool.

The project TraCES introduces a novel research infrastructure for the computer assisted study of the Gǝʿǝz language as it is transmitted in written sources from various periods. This newly created corpus of annotated Ethiopic texts opens new horizons to linguists and philologist and can be subjected to an array of scientific queries.

Review, Aethiopica, Vol 20 (2017)

Frank Moore Cross's contributions to Semitic and Hebrew philology were both direct and indirect: direct, in his publications on aspects of Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic grammar; and indirect, in ...

This article analyzes sociolinguistic as pects of three Semitic words used in the Gospel of John. Since all these words had wellestablished Hellenistic equivalents in the time of John's writing, their use may be interpreted as a deliberate attempt to establish additional points of contact with nonbelieving Jewish readers. In that case, the use of the convergent forms [~abbi,], [Messi,aj], and [~Wsanna,] in the Fourth Gos pel does not support the hypothesis of “antilanguage” in John and makes one reconsider the results of the research based on that concept.

The aim of the project is to produce a full diplomatic edition of the single most important textual witness to the Mishna—ms. Kaufmann A50. The edition will attempt to establish a Mishna text that will provide a holistic description of (an important branch of) the Rabbinic Hebrew language tradition, in a way that will in turn serve as a basis both for a sound grammatical/lexicographical description, as well as for comparison to related traditions of Hebrew (and Aramaic).

The article presents a critical evaluation of the most detailed and the most important synthesis of the Semitic languages and linguistics entitled ‘The Semitic Languages’ edited by Stefan Weninger with collaboration of several leading specialists. It is rather natural that papers written by 67 authors dealing with almost all the Semitic languages represent different levels and some of the opinions are debatable but generally speaking this is a very useful and important book which will remain standard for a long time. The chapters on ‘Proto-Semitic Phonetics and Phonology’ and on ‘Proto-Semitic Lexicon’ by Leonid Kogan are particularly valuable.

Review, Aethiopica, Vol 18 (2015)

One of the best-known features of Neo-Ethio-Semitic languages is the use of the third-person possessive suffix as a definite article (Appleyard 2005, Rubin 2010). In this study we show that third-person possessive suffixes are also used as definite articles in other Semitic languages, although in none of them is this function fully grammaticalized, as it is in Ethio-Semitic. Beyond adding data that have received little attention so far, we offer an explanation for the phenomenon in Semitic, rather than concentrating on one branch, as has been done thus far in the literature.

Background: The current study evaluated the quantitative performance of Muslim researchers to publish existing articles regarding Quran in relation with medical sciences in Scopus Databases and rate of citations. Objectives: To provide the ideas of thinking and studying the main ways of development and penetration of Quran teachings beyond the boundaries of Islamic countries. Materials and Methods: The present study is an applied descriptive research which has been performed by citation analysis method. Population of the current study includes all the articles regarding the relation of holy Quran and medical sciences (77 records) which have been indexed in Scopus Databases. Descriptive statistics and Excel software were used to set the data. Results: the present study showed that the total citations to the 77 articles, as the population of the study, were 180, and an average of citation rate to each article was 2.33. In terms of time, citations to the investigated articles mostly referred to 2009 with 32 cases, 2008 with 27 cases, and 2010 with 25 cases, respectively. Also, "Journal of Semitic Studies" published the highest number of articles in this field , 13 articles, followed by the journal of "Medicine and Law" with 3 articles. Conclusions: The number of articles about the relation of Quran teachings in medical sciences in Scopus Databases was very low. It shows that either the Muslim researchers have not taken enough advantage from Quran in their investigations or they have not published their findings in the international domain. To increase the quality and quantity of scientific productions in this field, to index the findings in reliable websites, and also to promote Quran teachings in medical sciences properly, in addition to improving English writing skills, researchers try to improve the quality and quantity of the articles and index them in reliable international websites.

This study presents a solution for morphological and lexical problems that remain outstanding concerningbɔmɔ. Two distinct Semitic nouns are identified as the derivational basis for the attested forms and meanings in biblical Hebrew.

Abstract The beginnings of the study of the Hebrew language in Wittenberg go back to the very first years of the university’s establishment and are associated with the initiatives of several scholars dealing with humanistic studies at the time. Through developing the study in three ancient languages, in keeping with the ideal of a complete humanistic erudition, Wittenberg perceived an opportunity to carve a niche of excellence for itself vis-à-vis the older universities. By introducing instruction in Hebrew along with Greek and Latin, the newly founded Leucorea sought to distinguish itself as a model for all other universities in Germany. The article traces the important steps of the history of the study of Hebrew language in Wittenberg among and outside of the theological faculty mentioning the curricula of its most famous teachers and professors.

Development of Aspect and Tense in Semitic Languages: Typological ConsiderationsA survey of pertinent literature reveals that many studies of aspect in Semitic languages do not pay a due attention to the crucial theoretical distinction of perfect and perfectivity. In this paper I will adopt the ‘chronogenetic' model of the morphosyntactic development of tense and aspect tested for the Indo-European languages (Hewson & Bubenik 1997) that allows five major aspectual categories to be distinguished (prospective, inceptive, imperfective, perfective, perfect) within ‘Event Time’. I will argue that the appearance in Arabic of the analytic double-finite perfect (of the typekun-tu katab-tu‘I had written’) was the most significant innovation during the New Stage not to be found in the other Central Semitic languages. During the Middle Stage in Mishnaic Hebrew and Middle Aramaic the canonical progressive aspect was paradigmatized while Classical Arabic created its double-finite counterpart (kān-a ya-ktub-u‘he was writing’). The significance of this approach to the study of the universals of tense and aspect will be evaluated.

gnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson were twin sisters who excelled in Semitic studies, particularly Syriac and iArabic, producing more than forty published works (articles and monographs), of which nineteen were critical editions of important Christian texts based on early medieval manuscript witnesses. The manuscripts, including one of the earliest known versions of the Gospels (dated to the late fourth or early fifth century ce),1 were mostly discovered by the twins themselves and many were in the difficult-to-read palimpsest form.2 Their scholarly work, first conducted when they were in their fifties and at a time when women were not admitted to British universities, was greatly acclaimed. In addition to being among the first women to receive honorary doctorates (including Doctors of Divinity from Heidelberg, Doctors of Law from St. Andrews, a PhD from Halle and a Doctor of Letters from Dublin), the twins were finally awarded the prestigious Triennial Gold Medal for their “special eminence in Oriental research” by the Royal Asiatic Society.3 The recent publication of a new biography of the twins, together with the re-release of eight of their critical works by Gorgias Press, indicates that the time is ripe for a re-assessment and appreciation of the twins’ scholarship.4 Although they are often mentioned in academic writings where their work is relevant, their scholarly work has been somewhat neglected. After their deaths in the 1920s, their contribution to scholarship was recalled by just a handful of Semitic scholars, and only recently has there been an academic article dealing solely with some of their A

The Semitic languages have enjoyed a long tradition of linguistic study, and remain one of the most widely studied of the world's language families. The large amount of scholarship that is generated on both the ancient and modern languages continues to have an effect on our understanding of the internal subgrouping of the Semitic family. Unfortunately, for both the specialist and non-specialist, reliable and up-to-date treatments of this topic are not easily found. This article will survey the current views on Semitic subgrouping and highlight recent scholarship on the issue.

PHILIP SADGROVE (Hrsg.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 209 Seiten, zahlreiche Abbildungen ISBN 0 19 856875 4 Die vorliegende Sonderausgabe des Journal of Semitic Studies vereint dreizehn Vo...